Hi steemians! Today let's get started on the Chinese Education system with this question --- how to enter a school? It's probably the essential part of the misunderstanding. So let's begin!
Some facts so you can understand real quick---
Elementary school is from grades 1 to 6. Secondary school covers 6 years. 7th - 9th grades are middle school and 10-12th grades are high school. After a 4-year undergraduate school, it's graduate school.
This is what happens with most youngsters living with high expectations. Some continue their education but the majority enter the job market after getting a bachelor/ graduate degree. Homeschooling is rare and vocational school students aren’t taken as seriously.
An examination-oriented education considers students’ academic ability the most important of all abilities. There are two crucial tests to evaluate the academic ability here in China: the High School Entrance Exam (AKA Zhongkao) and the College Entrance Exam (AKA Gaokao).They both take place once a year in June.
What I’m going to write about today is Zhongkao, 10th graders would totally look at 9th graders with a smirk after this!
1.What is Zhongkao for?
Government pays for public education until 9th grade, so all kids are obliged to go to primary and middle school. In Chengdu, public primary and middle schools can’t arrange tests to select students. The government is trying to reduce young students’ pressure and make public education as equal as possible.
But after grade 9, students develop quite differently. Also, we need to pay the tuition fees for ourselves, which is super cheap in public schools --- about CNY800 (approximately USD 120) per semester.
So that’s what Zhongkao is for — to put students of similar academic abilities together to learn and live in high school.
The types of high schools are shown here.
app:Ideament
2.Who takes Zhongkao?
If you want a middle school degree and/or continue your education, you must take it. There are some exceptions but that’s not the focus
3.Scores and admissions?
In Chengdu, the total score is 700. Detailed scores for each subject is shown in the chart below.
app: Numbers
Note: There are some ways to get extra scores. e.g. winning certain art/science prizes. Extra scores can be 5,8,10 or more.
The highest score ( extra scores excluded) in Chengdu this year was 660 ( which was done by my classmate —bravo!).
Generally there are 4 ways of admissions---
(1)Regular online admission
Students fill in forms online to apply for three schools and schools admit a certain number of students according to their scores ( extra scores included). This means that schools don’t just set a number and those who exceed that get admitted. The lowest admitting grades for each school is decided by how many students choose this very school.
In order to avoid situations that students miss their 1st choice, every school holds a kind of info session the day the Zhongkao results come out. Teachers answer questions from students and their parents all day at school. The school that I am in right now, Chengdu No.7 High School (Linyin Campus) guaranteed students who had a total score of 635 or more (extras excluded) can be admitted online. In the end, according to the results or form fillings online, the lowest score was 633 (extras included) for regular online admission, which was the highest in Chengdu.
(2)Specialty students
Schools need students with certain talents to help improve the schools’ art atmosphere and win awards. They announce how many students they need for each category and have experts to test whoever signed up to try. Categories usually include choir, orchestra, track and field, hosting, etc. Students with proof of specialty (e.g. awards) can sign up. When admitting students, both specialty and academic abilities are considered and ranked. Meaning if a student has the best singing voice in the world yet also a low Zhongkao score, he/she won’t be admitted.
Also, students with outstanding art/academic performances are directly selected by schools. But they are the minority.
(3)Quota allocation
High schools distributes places to many middle schools in March or April before Zhongkao. Students voluntarily sign up for schools and the top students on each school’s list are admitted. Once they confirm the admission, they mustn’t attend another high school. It’s like the Early Decision process of US colleges in some ways but not exactly.
This allocation is to make high school opportunities more equal, especially for middle schools with more humble grades.
(4)Academic assessment
Schools set tests themselves to select candidates who volunteer to take them. Students from out of town do this to be admitted while local students do this to get into better classes. The tests are SUPER hard and a very limited number of students succeed.
4.What is it like and how to prepare?
I took 5 Zhongkao subjects in June 2017. More than 30 thousand students did this year. 9th Graders from different schools enter a test center (usually a middle school campus) to take tests which last 2 days.
Many middle schools have various activities for 7th and 8th graders. 9th graders spend most time studying the whole school year. When I say most I mean more than 90%. In my case, I studied at least 10 hours a day. More than 10 big school activities are cut down to 2 that school year.
Preparing or the PE exam was tiring but fun. Everyone runs at least 1000 meters each day and do a lot of jumping and stretching to get the 50 points. Full marks standards for girls: finishing 800m in 3min38sec, jumping no less than 1.96 m long and reaching more than 17.4 cm in stretching. For guys: finishing 1000m in 3min48sec, jumping no less than 2.46m long and I don’t remember what they have to do for stretching. This is probably because my classmates are all wonderful athletes and most of us got full marks!
My loving class after the PE exam. We nailed it!
That’s all for today! I’ll give more details about Zhongkao and share my experiences next time! Thanks for reading and supporting!
*Plain facts are boring so each post of this series will be a fragment of the general system, students’ daily life or my own experience later on.
**Concerning the accuracy of information, I’ll be introducing primary school to undergraduate school in this education series. General information applies to most parts of mainland China while different provinces have different education policies. In most cases, I take my province and my city, which are Sichuan and Chengdu, as an example to talk about related policies.